


Rudimentary Neurolinguistic Connectivity

by monsterbate



Series: How to Minor in (Soul) Marks [1]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Family Dynamics, Gen, Jeff Winger Has Issues, M/M, Softly Shipping Everyone, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Study Group
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24432040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterbate/pseuds/monsterbate
Summary: Sosix marks? Either Jeff Winger is going to screw things up over and over and over, or else he's going to be into some kinky shit.(The Study Group shares soulmarks.)
Relationships: Annie Edison/Jeff Winger, Britta Perry/Jeff Winger, Jeff Winger & the Study Group, Troy Barnes & Abed Nadir
Series: How to Minor in (Soul) Marks [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781293
Comments: 38
Kudos: 201





	Rudimentary Neurolinguistic Connectivity

The thing is: six marks is kind of a lot of pressure.

One mark is normal and routine. You match and that's that, which makes it straightforward, easy. Two? It’s riskier; there’s more complexity. Maybe you fuck things up with one of them, or you lose one of them, so you get another match. Maybe you have to figure out how to balance both. And three? It’s basically chaos: how can you have that many people who are meant to matter that much? It’s just not feasible. It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible.

So _six marks_? Either Jeff Winger is going to screw things up over and over and over, or else he's going to be into some kinky shit. 

:: 

His first soulmark is _What did you say?_ in an even hand, stacked neatly on the inside of his wrist. The handwriting is precise and careful in a way Jeff likes, even if its placement on top of so many other marks is really, really scary. 

The first time he heard it, he was seven and old enough to know what it meant. He’d swallowed hard and held his wrist against his side and waited for something important to happen.

Except the person who said it wasn’t a match. They laughed when he'd pulled up his sleeve and held out his arm. Laughed and—most importantly—left. 

The next time he heard it, he hadn't said anything and neither had the person who'd said the words. He figured he'd just have to wait for someone who said his words and wanted it, too. 

Years later, he asks the tall guy with wide, piercing eyes from his Spanish class for the time and gets a sharp “ _What did you say?_ ” in return. His soul doesn't spark or stir or anything nonsensical like that: he just feels a twinge. A small moment of clarity before life moves on. He doesn't even think of marks until much, much later.

Abed shrugs when Jeff asks him about it weeks after the fact. “I wondered if you would notice that I said your words. But you didn't seem to realize it, which is nothing like the movies. I thought it would be? It was a little anticlimactic, actually."

“Don’t you think it means something?” Jeff asks, and immediately regrets it because Abed looks at Jeff’s arm, at the words that sit heavy on his wrist. 

He blinks. “It can mean whatever you want it to mean. That’s what you want me to say, right?”

“Did I say that?” 

“No. But you don’t want me to care about it, do you? You want me to dismiss it. You want me to think it doesn’t matter because you want to think it doesn't matter.”

“Do yours matter?” Jeff asks finally. 

Abed shrugs, and Jeff can just make out the black marks along his collarbones, one on either side, showing over the neck of his shirt. “They’re supposed to indicate a level of compatibility that I struggle with on a daily basis, so yes, I do have some interest in the topic.” 

Jeff wonders what the hell that means, and doesn’t answer.

::

“ _Don't hit on me, okay?_ ”

He's heard his second mark often enough that it's basically lost all meaning. Because he hits on everyone and everything indiscriminately. He doesn't even blink when the blonde hottie from Spanish class spits it at him in the dour cafeteria like it might actually keep him away. 

"I wouldn't dream of it," he says and she finally glances up, expression wary. The first hurdle, cleared. Now, he just has to get her number and he’ll be home free. 

It’ll be a walk in the park. Probably. 

Later, when he's holding his forearm and blinking at five shocked faces (and Abed), he'll wonder why she didn't say anything; why he didn't say anything; why he feels so sick and wrong inside, staring down the table at the people who are meant to be his whole, damn world.

::

After it happens, when it’s quiet, there's a moment in Group Study Room F where each of them stop and wait for some acknowledgement. Because they’d said his words and he’d said theirs and there was Jeff, somehow, in the middle of everything, holding his breath.

It’s fucking terrifying.

“I’m going to go,” he says when he can no longer stand it, when the clamor in his head is too loud and the anticipation too strong. “But I’ll be back. Maybe.”

Five sets of eyes follow him as he leaves, except Abed who is watching the rest of them watch Jeff. Somehow, that feels important. 

The moment the library doors swing closed behind him, he feels the urge to run. But instead he stops on the steps and lifts his sleeve, lets himself look at the stacked list of marks like they’ll explain what in the hell just happened. 

He met—all of them. Back to back to back, like dominos. No time, no space, no screw ups to explain the multitude of them. They’re just—all there, waiting for him. 

His arm throbs faintly, likely in time to his foolish heart or something. 

::

Somehow, he makes it back inside. Somehow, he survives the destruction and resurrection of his faux study group and Britta’s blasé disregard for honesty or attempted dinner dates and also the general curiosity of his six— _six!_ —matches. 

Over conjugated verbs and flash cards and Chang’s spotty sanity, the whole group becomes something better and brighter and bolder. And while he still thinks his marks are setting him up for failure, he also realizes that the universe got something right because somehow these strangers are becoming the most important people in his life. 

Which is totally lame. 

::

Shirley has one mark on either foot, something that has apparently been a burden on her soul since they came in when she was a girl. “How was I meant to commit fully to my marriage when I had a second match out there the whole time?” she tearfully explains, and Jeff hates everyone in the study room just a little bit for being A Thing That Happened To Him and Also To Each Other.

“That’s ridiculous,” he says over the soothing nonsense everyone else is spouting. “Having multiple marks doesn’t make you unfaithful, it just means you have more to give. It’s a sign of _character_.”

Britta snorts at him. “You must have loads of character, huh? Since you like to give it away so much?”

“You asking?” Jeff asks. 

“You wish,” Britta says. 

“Anyways!” Annie leans over to rub Shirley’s shoulder. “Marks don't mean love; we both know that. They just mean… there's a connection. And sometimes that connection is romantic and sometimes it's platonic—"

"—and sometimes it means epic bffs—"

"Yes, thank you, Troy—and sometimes it just means 'maybe, possibly' but it never actually comes to anything. If your—if Andre doesn't realize that, it's _his_ problem."

Britta breaks in to agree, and also disagree, and then Troy’s starting to cry and Shirley’s bemoaning the state of marriage today and the whole thing spirals out of control like it always does and likely always will.

Jeff lets the conversation roll over him as he hears the echoes of 'maybe, possibly' over and over, some sort of siren song for bastards, probably.

::

Under Abed's words on his arm is Britta's bold, jagged penmanship, fierce and hurried. Pierce's handwriting is almost beautiful: the weirdly formal copperplate at odds with everything about the man. Troy’s is a rushed smear, barely legible, but so distinctly _his_ that Jeff kind of loves it. Shirley's words remind him of the little notes his teachers used to leave in the margins of his schoolwork: warm and soft, even as they gave no quarter. And then down near his elbow, almost tucked away, is Annie’s precise feminine scrawl, bold and black in the way she uses when she’s absolutely certain what the thing should say and how it should be said. 

Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes Jeff just looks at his stupid arm with its stupid marks and smiles.

::

The first time he sees Britta's mark is during the first paintball game as she's stripping off her pants, dark across her left thigh: _Oh, hey_. The words look flat, cold.

He wonders how many matches she’s had, wonders if this is why she doesn’t wear skirts, wonders what it might mean.

Britta shrugs when she sees him looking. "I don't believe in soulmates. Love and all that crap can't be _foretold_ or whatever." At Jeff's empty pause, she scoffs even as she climbs back into his lap. "Don't tell me you believe in it," she says.

He doesn’t answer. And while it doesn't stop Jeff from having sex with Britta on the study room table (and then winning at paint ball), it does make him run a sloppy thumb over _Don't hit on me, okay?_ when she's not looking.

::

The morning after the disastrous night at the bar for his 21st, Troy edges through the far door of the study room like he’s sneaking up on a ghost. The fact that Jeff knows this is what he’s doing makes him feel even more hungover. “Jeff? Can I ask you a question?” 

“Does it involve alcohol?”

“No?” 

Jeff slouches down at the study room table so he can brace his shattering head against the back of his chair. “Shoot.”

“Okay, so: are marks always so—confusing?” 

If he wasn’t so hungover, Jeff would run. But since there’s a very good chance he’d puke if he moved, he stays put and only manages a semi-annoyed grunt. “What makes you think I’m the person to ask about this?”

Troy intentionally looks at each of the empty chairs around the table. “Um, you have like a million of them?”

“Objection,” Jeff mutters. 

“Anyways. I just. Wanted to ask. Because—I don’t know.”

There’s an actual thread of woe in Troy’s voice, which is the only reason Jeff tips his sunglasses down to peer over them. “Is this about Abed?” he hazards. 

Troy nods, his hand rubbing absently at his stomach. Jeff’d seen his marks during the whole pen fiasco a month ago; he remembers there were two or three curved around the line of his ribs. 

“It’s just—he said my words, and I’m sure I said his, but he won’t…say anything. Like, we’re _friends_ , but it’s like it never happened. And that’s...really confusing?”

Jeff considers the expanse of table between him and Troy, and thinks about Abed, and about Abed and Troy. He thinks about the words on his wrist, and the words on Troy’s ribs, and the words on Abed’s collarbones, and he sighs. 

“Not to be the cliched friend character in any movie ever, but: I think you really need to talk to Abed about this.”

“Yeah,” Troy says. “You’re probably right. Do—do I need to tell you the same thing?”

Jeff sits up so fast he nearly blacks out. “What? Why would you say that?”

Troy just looks at him like he’s speaking fluent Spanish, which would be entirely impossible after Chang. “Um, duh doy,” he says, gesturing at the entire empty table. 

Jeff pushes his sunglasses up his nose and lays his head back until he can see nothing but gross ceiling tiles. “I think I’m good; thanks.”

Troy kicks his chair back from the table with a snort, loud and loose and definitely doing it on purpose. “Right. Jeff Winger knows all—except about hipster bars, apparently. Well, I gotta get to class! Have a good morning!” 

Jeff waits until he leaves before he lets himself groan.

::

So the thing about soulmates or matches or whatever they’re being called is that they’re not _perfect_. Which is something Jeff has always known. It's not news.

But the fact that he’s matched to six other people who don’t seem to have a problem with the fact that he’s matched with _six other people_ is—just how it is, apparently. They’re a package deal, or something. Even when they fight, even when they swear they’re done and they’re never going to speak to one another ever again, it’s a group activity. 

It’s not because Jeff, specifically, fucked up. It’s not because they’re better off without him. No, it’s because this is how they do things: together.

So that’s nice.

:: 

“Narratively, you exist to connect outsiders to the inner cult of our marks,” Abed announces after class one afternoon. 

“...what?”

“I’m in a seminar on the portrayal of marks in the media: usually, mark stories are extended wish fulfillment, or they serve as an obstacle to understanding one's self. If this were a movie, you’d be the nonbeliever who overcame his fears and was fully committed to the ideals of matches by the final scene. It would likely be a mediocre drama, ignored by critics but finding an audience with sexually frustrated middle-aged women who would find you attractive but also safe.”

“Sure?” Jeff says. 

“I just wanted you to know that I appreciate the journey you’re on. Finding security in your marks is a fraught, if not societally overdone, journey.”

“Okay. Thanks, I guess."

“You’re welcome,” Abed says, and leaves. 

::

He keeps waiting for Annie to bring it up. To reach out and stop him, to lay hands on her words, to _claim_ , to articulate the connection he refuses to name. But she won’t. Even when she’s talking about the “Annie of it all,” she never mentions the fact that maybe their _thing_ meant something because they shared words and that meant something, too.

But she doesn't.

She doesn’t and he doesn’t know why, and it’s driving him insane.

Sometimes he thinks that maybe she doesn’t have his words at all—that she’s blank, or else she’s got someone else’s words and he doesn’t know which is worse. Sometimes he imagines finding her words, finding _his_ words on her, and—and— 

He wants to know why, and where, and _how_.

Part of him worries about it—of everyone in the study group, it's Annie he expects to be the romantic, clingy sort, putting undue weight on some words that really only matter a little bit—but another part of him is relieved because if she doesn't mention it, then he doesn't need to mention it.

Plausible deniability, booyah.

::

Sometimes he forgets and looks down to see all his marks laid out like a shopping list down his arm and he gets this little zing that makes him feel actual adult _feelings_. 

It’s gross, but he’s not just going to stop rolling up his sleeves to keep from feeling things. He can’t deny Greendale his forearms, especially not after all those wrist curls.

::

‘ _Are you the board-certified tutor?_ ’ 

He doesn’t expect it to hurt so much, when Pierce dies. But it does, and it’s a strange ache in the back of his throat that won’t stop. Alcohol barely covers the tang of it, and he wonders if this is how it begins to unravel, for him. 

Because he can’t stop picturing it, now: how the rest of them will leave him. How their marks on him will fade, like Pierce’s has; how they will say their goodbyes and not look back; how he will lose them to time and distance and disdain. 

And he misses Pierce. He does. He misses the unexpected wisdom and the bald fortitude and the unwillingness to be unimportant. Even when they weren’t exactly friends, Pierce was never nothing to him—and that matters. 

Sometimes Jeff hates that it matters, but it does. It does. 

::

“I think part of the reason I don’t believe in the whole soulmate thing is because—” Britta breaks off to pop an olive in her mouth, chin on the bar. “—because I only have the one stupid mark. But I match with _everyone_. I mean all they have to say is ‘Oh, hey!’ and I just can’t stop myself, y’know? I just can’t stop myself from wanting—the whole stupid thing. But they’re not.”

Jeff is drunk enough that he’s actually leaning on the bar, which is problematic for both his emotional and physical well-being. Also his sweater. “What d’you mean, they’re not?”

Britta doesn’t answer right away, busy chasing her straw around her glass. “I mean,” she says finally, throwing out a hand. “I _mean_ , like, _we matched_ , right? But we’re not _it_ , y’know? Like, I matched with _Blade_ and I matched with Subway—Rick—and I matched with _you_ but am I happy? Am I good? Am I? I _mean_.”

Jeff wants to laugh, but fights it. Somehow he knows she might never forgive him if he did. “Britta, but—Britta. Britta, here’s the thing: we matched, right? And I like you. And those other guys? Some’f probably even _love_ you. Which, gross.”

“Way gross,” she echoes. 

“But we _do_. Cause you’re Britta. You’re _the worst_ but you even Britta’d _that_ cause you’re also the _best_.”

“Still gross,” she repeats, but he can tell she’s trying to hide a smile, which is just the worst.

“You’re totally into it,” he says instead, nudging her shoulder. “Now how about you buy me a drink?” 

::

“You okay, Jeff?” Shirley asks him one afternoon over takeout and gossip. She’s been scrolling Facebook for ten minutes looking for one of Leonard’s posts when she looks up and catches him tracing a finger over his arm.

“Fine. Yeah. I’m fine.” His lies sound tired. He wonders if he can fake a realistic allergic reaction to fries, but gives it up when Shirley raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. 

“You missing Pierce?” she asks, soft, reaching out to catch his elbow. “It’s okay, you know. To miss someone who’s important to you.”

He nods, but then decides to go all in. “It’s not just—Pierce. It’s all of you. You’re all important to me.”

“You’re important to all of us, too, Jeffrey. You know that, right?” 

“But you all have...other people. You—all of you—you’re all I have.” 

“Oh, Jeffrey, no,” she says, very serious. She pauses. “I’ve—I’ve never told you this before, but I didn’t want two marks, you know.”

Jeff stills and waits for her to continue, to deny him or save him or ruin him. 

“It felt...wrong. When I met Andre, I thought he was everything I wanted out of life—except for Jesus, of course. But then I met you, and I realized that I was missing something important: a _friend_. Someone who challenged me, and made me laugh, and made me _mad_ , and who made me a better person.”

“Shirley, I don’t—”

“Oh, shush. You don’t need to say anything. I just need you to know that you’re important to me, and to everyone in that study group. You _matter_ , Jeffrey. You got it?”

Jeff is not going to tear up over some nice words. He’s not. Nope. But he manages to nod, and Shirley waits a only beat before throwing her arms around him in a quick, tight hug. 

“Good. Now, look at this picture of Leonard and tell me if his hat isn’t the most ridiculous thing you’ve seen on God’s green earth this week.”

::

“Why don’t you ever mention your marks?” Jeff asks one day when he’s watching television in apartment 303, beer bottle balanced on his knee. 

Annie glances up sharply, eyes wary. “Should I be mentioning them?”

“I mean. We matched, right?”

She lifts a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Yeah, Jeff. We matched. I said your words,” her gaze drops instinctively to where all his marks are laid out, exposed by his rolled up sleeves, “and you said mine.”

“But—?”

She picks at the label on her water bottle, turning it over and over in her hands. “But..." A breath. "My parents matched,” she says, finally. “And, well, my mother used to say that you couldn’t trust anything but a mark. Marks were how you knew a person, I guess. But my parents didn’t really...know one another. Or even like one another. But they _matched_ and that just had to mean something. It had to. More than how they felt, or what they wanted—the mark had to mean something.”

Jeff considers this. He wants to get this right. He needs to get this right.

“Annie. We’ve been—we’ve known each other for years now. Do you think I’d be sitting on this disgusting futon with you if I didn’t _care_ about you with or without some stupid words telling me to?”

“I don’t know; you’re the one who brought it up!”

“Well, yeah: it’s been _five years_ , Edison. I think it’s weird you haven’t mentioned it, especially when all my marks are basically brought up every week.”

“That’s not fair," she says, but he can hear the laughter in it, and he lets himself slump back against the cushions, a feeling that’s almost happiness spinning to life in his chest. 

The credits are rolling on whatever they were pretending to watch when she speaks again, leaning against his shoulder and murmuring, “I care about you, too, Jeff,” into his ear like a promise, like a vow. 

If they end up holding hands for the rest of the night, that’s just...for personal reasons. 

::

It’s been months and months since Troy left and only a handful of weeks since Shirley announced her imminent departure for fucking _Georgia_ of all places, but _That means you do my homework, right Seacrest?_ and _I need to call my babysitter if we’re going to be later than ten_ are still as vivid as the day they’d been said. 

And, okay, sure: maybe he’d spent the first few weeks watching them anxiously, waiting for them to fade to the same silver-grey as Pierce’s mark, waiting for them to disappear from his skin and from his soul or whatever fate-ridden bullshit you want to assign to the whole thing. 

Because goddamnit, he missed Troy and he missed Shirley and he missed Pierce and losing them back to back to back like that had torn something loose in him. 

And while his therapist hasn’t quite been brave enough to start unpacking all the emotional baggage that comes with Jeff’s six soulmarks, he thinks the fact that he’s willing to acknowledge just how much their absence hurts is progress or something. Growth. _Maturity_ , pardon the sarcastic air quotes.

It’s getting easier and easier to let himself feel that, and know it, and be okay with it. 

::

One night at the bar, Abed and Annie and Britta catch him holding his arm, fingers settled into the spaces between his marks, and he doesn’t even care. Because Annie’s eyes soften, and Abed reaches over and takes his free hand, and Britta tops off his scotch and for a moment, he knows he’s in love with all of them. 

And that feels—good. 

Really good.


End file.
